In this brief allocution of 26 May 1959, Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) addresses the Canons Regular of St Augustine on the occasion of the federation of their four congregations, recalling Nicholas II’s confirmation of their institute, invoking the memory of St George in Alga with its “two splendid lights” Eugenius IV and St Lawrence Giustiniani, commending their Augustinian heritage, and exhorting them to unity, charity, and fervour in religious observance under their newly constituted federation and primatial abbot.
Behind the gentle rhetoric of continuity and spiritual encouragement stands a programmatic redirection of religious life towards sentimental irenicism and juridical centralisation, preparing the demolition of integral Catholic monastic discipline and subordinating ancient orders to the conciliar revolution gestating in the mind of a future antipope.
Roncalli’s Soft-Voice Revolution: Using Augustinian Canons for the Conciliar Agenda
Antipapal Aura: The Usurper Speaking in the Name of the Church
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith grounded exclusively in pre-1958 doctrine, the first and decisive fact is this: Angelo Roncalli, presented here as “Ioannes XXIII,” had already manifested a doctrinal, liturgical, and ecumenical orientation incompatible with the Catholic papal office as defined by Vatican I (*Pastor Aeternus*) and consistently defended by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
Key points, verifiable from his words and deeds and read in light of binding pre-1958 teaching:
– Pius IX’s *Syllabus Errorum* (1864) condemns the notion that the Roman Pontiff can reconcile himself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” understood as religious indifferentism and secular autonomy (proposition 80). Roncalli’s entire later program—convoking a council for aggiornamento, praising religious liberty, initiating ecumenical gestures—is precisely the reconciliation condemned as an error.
– St Pius X’s *Pascendi* and the attached *Lamentabili sane* condemn Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” explicitly targeting historicism, evolution of dogma, and the subordination of doctrine to modern consciousness. Roncalli’s record (modernist associations in France and the East, rehabilitations of previously censured figures, later council) aligns with the tendencies these documents anathematize, not with their prescriptions.
– Pius XII’s teaching (e.g. *Humani Generis*) warns sharply against relativizing dogma, diluting the supernatural, and subjecting doctrine to contemporary thought. Roncalli proceeds in the opposite direction.
Thus, when Roncalli speaks to the Canons Regular as if he were the lawful successor of St Peter, we are confronted with a juridically usurped voice using authentic Augustinian language as camouflage for a nascent program contrary to prior papal condemnations. The allocution, though externally mild, participates in this usurpation: it is an act of spiritual misdirection carried out under stolen insignia.
Factual Level: Benevolent History as Instrument of Manipulation
Roncalli’s text is short, therefore each element is deliberate. Let us deconstruct the factual layer.
1. Commemoration of Nicholas II and the Lateran Synod:
– He recalls that Nicholas II “reformed and confirmed” the institute of the Canons Regular at the Lateran Synod, noting the ensuing growth “per catholici orbis fines.”
– This is historically accurate: Nicholas II (Lateran Synod 1059) and later popes supported and regularized canonical life, emphasizing common life, liturgical service, and hierarchical obedience.
The manipulation lies not in the fact but in the use:
– Roncalli invokes an 11th-century papal reform as a precedent for his own “paternal” encouragement, suggesting continuity between Nicholas II’s authentic strengthening of religious discipline and his own impending restructuring and aggiornamento of religious life.
– But Nicholas II acted to enforce stricter canonical observance, to shield clerics from lay investiture, to secure ecclesial purity and independence. By contrast, Roncalli’s subsequent line (manifested in the conciliar process he initiates) leads religious institutes toward accommodation with secular states, psychological “renewal,” and dilution of monastic separation from the world—precisely contrary to the spirit defended by Pius IX in Syllabus 19, 55 and by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*.
2. Reference to San Giorgio in Alga, Eugenius IV, and St Lawrence Giustiniani:
– Roncalli evokes with emotion the now-silent island of San Giorgio in Alga where the reforming community once flourished and where Eugenius IV and St Lawrence Giustiniani emerged.
– He states that he succeeds both (as bishop of Venice and as “pope”), thus claiming a twofold spiritual lineage: “uterque Noster, uterque vester, uterque Nos et vos artius devincit in Christo.”
Here the ideological subtext emerges:
– By aligning himself with Eugenius IV (who defended the papal primacy against conciliarism) and St Lawrence Giustiniani (model of reforming holiness), Roncalli clothes his coming revolution with an aura of orthodox reform.
– Yet the conciliar revolution he is about to unleash (Vatican II) will rehabilitate precisely the conciliarist tendencies resisted at Florence, erode papal monarchy through collegiality rhetoric, and dissolve the sharp contours of religious life. This is not legitimate reform *in eodem sensu eademque sententia* (in the same sense and the same judgment), but an inversion under borrowed symbols.
3. Federation of the four congregations and appointment of an Abbot Primate:
– He praises the “feliciter inita foederatio” of the four congregations of Canons Regular and the appointment of Louis Severinus Haller as Abbot Primate by the Apostolic See, along with the election of a new general.
Two grave problems:
– Centralisation as Instrument of Future Subversion:
– Pre-1958 Magisterium defends the rightful autonomy of religious orders within canonical norms, as a protection of their spirit and charism against worldly or statist intrusions (see Pius IX, Syllabus 53; Leo XIII’s encyclicals on religious life).
– Roncalli’s benign approval of a super-structure (federation + primate) becomes, in light of what follows historically, a mechanism by which the conciliar sect can more efficiently impose destructive reforms: once centralised, an order can be doctrinally and liturgically deformed from the top down.
– Thus, what seems like strengthening unity is in fact preparing a single lever for future doctrinal poisoning and liturgical devastation.
– Total Silence on the Coming Storm:
– May 1959: Roncalli has already announced his intention to convoke an ecumenical council (January 1959). He knows he is about to expose all religious institutes to “renewal” experiments.
– Yet in this allocution there is no warning, no safeguarding clause, no reaffirmation of immutable doctrine, no command to resist error. He presents only vague wishes for “ad elatiora, ad puriora, ad meliora,” emptied of doctrinal content.
– This silence is not innocent. It is the calculated omission of a man who intends to enlist the Canons Regular into the conciliar process, not to fortify them against it.
Linguistic Level: Sentimental Oratory as Cloak for Doctrinal Emptiness
The rhetoric here is polished, paternal, apparently pious. Precisely by its tone, it reveals the Modernist method anathematised by St Pius X.
Characteristic features:
1. Affective, non-dogmatic encouragement:
– Phrases like “suaviter animum Nostrum tangit et commovet,” “salutaris provisus,” “ad elatiora, ad puriora, ad meliora virtutis itinera,” present a spirituality of feelings and moral uplift detached from precise doctrinal anchoring.
– There is no explicit reaffirmation of the hardness of the Cross, the narrowness of the way, the reality of hell, or the necessity of separation from the world—elements always present in pre-1958 papal exhortations to religious.
2. Selective Augustinian language:
– Quoting Augustine: “Diligite veritatem, tenete unitatem, caritatem fovete” (“Love truth, hold unity, foster charity”) and the call to be “spiritu ferventes.”
– These phrases are orthodox in themselves; but here they are carefully truncated. Augustine’s integral doctrine includes: the necessity of visible Catholic unity under the true Church, the rejection of heresy, the condemnation of schism, the harsh denunciation of doctrinal deviation.
– Roncalli uses Augustinian watchwords emptied of their anti-heretical edge, transforming *veritas* into mere sincerity, *unitas* into affective cohesion within the conciliar structures, and *caritas* into sentimental benevolence, not the virile charity that anathematizes error for the salvation of souls.
3. Absence of dogmatic precision:
– The allocution contains no explicit reference to:
– The Council of Trent’s decrees on religious vows, clerical state, and sacraments.
– The anti-Modernist oath of St Pius X, then still in force.
– The condemnations of liberalism, indifferentism, and secret societies (Pius IX, Leo XIII).
– When a supposed Roman Pontiff addresses an ancient order in a time already infected by Modernist infiltration, to omit all reference to the concrete doctrinal battles of the last century is not a neutral editorial choice; it is a sign of programmatic evasion.
This linguistic strategy matches exactly what *Pascendi* exposes: Modernists avoid frontal contradiction, speak with traditional vocabulary soaked in new, imprecise meanings, and thus drive a wedge between form and substance.
Theological Level: What Is Not Said Condemns What Is Said
Measured against the immutable Catholic doctrine before 1958, the deepest indictment of this allocution is its silence.
1. Silence on the Most Holy Sacrifice:
– The Canons Regular are clergy whose primary vocation is liturgical: the solemn, daily offering of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* and the Divine Office.
– Yet Roncalli does not once explicitly exhort them to perseverance in the Tridentine liturgy, to jealous guarding of the sacrificial character of the Mass, to resistance against profanation or innovation.
– This omission is luminous in retrospect: the structures occupying the Vatican would soon replace the Roman Rite with a manufactured rite oriented to assembly and horizontal communion. The Canons are being praised, sentimentalised, and structurally organised, but not armed to defend the Sacrifice. This is theological betrayal by omission.
2. Silence on Modernism and doctrinal corruption:
– By 1959, the errors condemned in *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi* had already spread widely among clergy and religious.
– A truly Catholic pope would:
– Recall these condemnations.
– Charge the Canons to be guardians of orthodoxy, to repel false biblical criticism, relativism, and dogmatic evolution.
– Roncalli says nothing. He speaks as if no doctrinal war exists, reducing the spiritual life to generic “virtue” and “fervour.” This is incompatible with the papal duty described by St Pius X, who calls Modernism a plague to be relentlessly extirpated.
3. Subtle redefinition of “unity”:
– The call to “tenete unitatem” in his mouth cannot be heard in isolation from his already gestating ecumenical and interreligious agenda.
– Pre-1958 doctrine is unequivocal:
– There is one true Church; all who knowingly remain outside her are in error.
– Indifferentism (the idea that all religions are paths to God) is condemned (Syllabus 15–18).
– Roncalli’s subsequent acts (ecumenical gestures, welcoming of heretics and schismatics without calling them to conversion) show that his “unity” is not the unity of return to the one flock, but a horizontal, federative coexistence.
– Thus even in this allocution, the praise of federation and unity foreshadows the false ecclesiology of the conciliar sect: orders and congregations are being psychologically prepared to merge, adapt, and “dialogue” rather than to stand as fortresses of defined truth.
4. Horizontal pseudo-mysticism instead of the Kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that true peace and order rest solely on the public reign of Christ the King over individuals and societies, and denounces secularism and laicism as a mortal plague.
– In this allocution, there is no explicit assertion of Christ’s social Kingship, no call for the Canons to be militant witnesses against the secular state’s usurpations.
– Instead, the language suggests inward, apolitical piety—a convenient neutralisation of those who should have resisted the sweeping capitulation to secular democracy and religious liberty that the conciliar sect would shortly proclaim.
Symptomatic Level: A Microcosm of the Conciliar Sect’s Method
This short speech is a distilled example of how the conciliar revolution operates:
1. Capture of Symbols:
– Genuine saints (Augustine, Lawrence Giustiniani), orthodox reformers (Nicholas II, Eugenius IV), venerable institutions (Canons Regular) are invoked as if Roncalli’s project were their organic continuation.
– Yet the actual direction—toward ecumenism, hermeneutics of continuity, liturgical “renewal,” and doctrinal ambiguity—is irreconcilable with their teaching and practice.
– This is *fraus pia* in the worst sense: the pious fraud by which Modernists steal our saints to crown their apostasy.
2. Administrative Engineering:
– The praised federation and primatial structure serve as a pilot model for how the conciliar sect will subsequently:
– Fuse, restructure, or suppress religious institutes.
– Impose experimental constitutions.
– Level contemplative separation and align monastic life with the cult of man and the demands of “modern society.”
– Pre-1958 popes defend the Church’s divine constitution against state usurpation (Syllabus 39–45, 55). Roncalli subtly prepares ecclesiastical usurpation by a neo-church hostile to its own Tradition.
3. The “Good Pope” mask:
– This allocution contributes to the myth of the kindly, simple “pastor,” avoiding “harshness,” smiling upon all.
– But the papal office, as defined by Vatican I and exercised by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, includes:
– Condemnation of error.
– Defense of dogma.
– Protection of religious institutes from doctrinal corruption.
– To abdicate these aspects under a veil of amiable generalities is not kindness; it is dereliction of office—proof that the office is morally, and ultimately juridically, not held.
4. Preparatory anesthesia:
– Orders like the Canons Regular historically could have been bulwarks against liturgical vandalism and doctrinal dissolution.
– The allocution’s sweet tone, its lack of warning, its exaltation of internal “fervour” detached from concrete adherence to the anti-Modernist magisterium, functions as anesthesia.
– Once lulled into believing they are specially cherished partners in “renewal,” many of them will docilely accept the destruction of their own rite, habit, enclosure, and theology at the hands of the conciliar sect.
Contrast with Integral Catholic Norm: What a True Papal Exhortation Would Contain
To expose fully the bankruptcy of Roncalli’s discourse, it suffices to indicate what pre-1958 papal doctrine requires in analogous circumstances.
A truly Catholic successor of Peter addressing the Canons Regular in 1959 would, on the basis of prior magisterium:
– Reaffirm unequivocally:
– The immutability of dogma (*Vatican I, Dei Filius*).
– The condemnations of Modernism (*Lamentabili sane*, *Pascendi*).
– The Kingship of Christ (*Quas Primas*), demanding public witness against secular apostasy.
– The binding nature of the anti-Modernist oath.
– Command:
– Fidelity to the traditional Roman Rite and canonical observances.
– Refusal of any liturgical innovations undermining the sacrificial and propitiatory character of the Mass (Council of Trent, Session XXII).
– Vigilance against false ecumenism, indifferentism, and all rapprochement with condemned sects.
– Warn:
– Against the infiltration of seminaries and religious houses by rationalism, historicism, existentialism, psycho-theology.
– Against the seductions of “democratising” religious life and flattening hierarchical obedience.
– Against “federations” used to impose novelties in the name of unity.
Roncalli does none of this. Therefore, judged by the norm of prior magisterium—not by private opinion—his allocution stands condemned as a theologically hollow, strategically misleading gesture within a broader project of subversion.
Outcome: Spiritual Bankruptcy Behind Pious Words
Seen from the vantage of integral Catholic doctrine:
– The allocution’s praise of tradition is purely formal.
– Its exhortation to virtue is deracinated from the concrete doctrinal and liturgical battles which define true fidelity today.
– Its silence about Modernism, its sentimental Augustinianism, its enthusiasm for structural federation, and its appropriation of holy predecessors all serve one purpose: to enlist an ancient order into collaboration with the emerging conciliar sect while numbing its instinct of resistance.
This is the essence of post-1958 neo-church rhetoric: orthodox phrases deployed without their dogmatic spine, to seduce religious souls into passive complicity with an anti-Catholic revolution.
The Canons Regular addressed in 1959 stood at a crossroads: to cling to the unwavering magisterium up to Pius XII, or to follow the honeyed voice of a usurper preparing them for aggiornamento. History shows how many religious institutes chose the latter and withered. The allocution is not an innocent footnote; it is an early signal flare of the abomination of desolation preparing to stand where it ought not.
Source:
Allocutio ad Canonicos Regulares S. Augustini, e quattuor Congregationibus, quibus Ordo constat, feliciter mox inita foederatione (die 26 m. Maii, A. D. MCMLIX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025